Wise Child Read online

  So he thought. Except it was not his for the taking. Not after his drunken father died in an alehouse brawl.

  After the funeral they held a family conference. Ma said, 'I can't manage the farm. Our only income is from the saIe of the young cattle. There's never anything over when the Michaelmas rent's been paid.' Frank's married brothers couldn't help. Ma and Frank could have a home with them but there was no money to spare. It was Jimmy who was 'promised' to a dairymaid who said, 'I'll tell me fancee we'll wait a few years. I'll come back home, Ma. As long as Frank gets his education.'

  'And I'll work,’ Frank promised. 'I'll do two hours on the land before breakfast. I'll work Saturdays and Sundays till I go to Oxford. Then I'll work on the land when I'm home.'

  'First things first: Jimmy said. 'Let our Frank get his learning.'

  'I'm used to hard work,' Ma said. 'It won't be any different.'

  Frank had been humbled and grateful. Ma could have an easier life if she went to live with one of his married brothers. 'I won't forget it,' he told them all. 'I'll help you all when I'm earning good money.' He'd be a chartered accountant. 'I'll buy the farm for you, Ma. I'll make the name of Chancellor respected again.'

  Ma smiled for the first time in months. 'As long as you get on, son. We'll tell Old Man Hammond.'

  By September that year the hay was safely in the barn, ten young steers had been sold and there was money in the cash box under Ma's bed. Another year's living was assured and on Michaelmas day when agricultural rents are paid, Frank dressed smartly in a shirt and tie, flannels and his good jacket. Ma put aside her mourning and put on her Sunday costume of navy blue, with Michaelmas daisies as a buttonhole. Frank put the money into a chamois bag and escorted Ma to Archerfield.

  They were shown into the hall. It was the first time Frank had been over the threshold of Archerfield House and he was knocked out by the sight of it all. There were paintings on the walls of the reception hall where a log fire burned. The butler took them down a long corridor and into a small, wood-panelled room where Old Man Hammond sat behind a great mahogany desk.

  Ma stood, twisting the black edged handkerchief; nervous about facing the master. Then all at once, to Frank's alarm, his Ma bobbed down to curtsey to Old Man Hammond. Frank felt his gorge rise, and he felt angry, hot, suffocating shame, for Old Man Hammond remained seated at his desk. The owner of their farm did not even ask them to sit. He merely nodded at Ma then coldly said, 'I'm not renewing the tenancy. Plenty wants it.'

  Frank felt as if he had been struck. He looked at Ma and saw the colour drain from her face, saw tears come rolling down her cheeks. It was a few seconds before she whispered, 'We can pay! I've got money. Sir ...'

  Frank couldn't bear to see his mother crying and pleading with this ugly, weasel-faced old man. He came forward quickly and dumped the money bag on the desk, untied it and let the gold pieces tinkle on to the mahogany. 'Will this change your mind, Mr Hammond?'

  Old Man Hammond ignored him. 'I am giving you a cottage at Pott Shrigley, Mrs Chancellor. One and sixpence a week. Paid in advance. Have your stuff in the yard ready. Move out next Monday.' He did not even glance at Frank as he said, 'Pick your money up. You'll need it.'

  Blood rushed to Frank's head. His knuckles were white as he clenched his hands to stop himself from hitting the old man. He had never in his short life known fury like this - never thought he was capable of violence. If Ma were not beside him he'd...

  Frank's face was white with anger as he took the gold and put it back in the bag. Behind him Ma went on crying while the old weasel watched her without a flicker of interest or feeling. Frank put the bag in his pocket. 'Come on, Ma,' he said. 'Keep your pride. Let's get out of here.'

  He thought Ma was going to follow him out of the room but to his horror Frank saw her, take a step towards the chair and, drop to her knees at the old man's side crying, 'Mr Hammond, sir. Frank's won a place at Oxford! Didn't you know? You wanted your son to go to Oxford, sir ...'

  John, Old Man Hammond's son, was four years older than Frank. John was a young gentleman but not a bright one. He had never passed an exam in his life. At twenty years old, he had been refused a place at just about every university in the land. He was running Hammond Silks with his father. John himself was content, as would be any rich, good-looking young man. But Old Man Hammond's ambition had long since been diverted from himself to his son. The last thing he wanted was to hear that his tenant's son had gained something that, for all the tutoring and expensive schooling, his own son had not.

  Ma twisted the damp handkerchief and jabbed at her eyes. 'We can manage, sir,' she wept. 'Our Jimmy's coming home.Frank's worked hard for a free place. He has been given a bursary, sir. Please …'

  Frank could take no more. 'Get up, Ma.' He helped her to her feet and put a protective arm round her. 'Come on. Don't ever let me see you begging anything of anyone again. Especially a Hammond.'

  Old Man Hammond's back was bent. He couldn't move fast but he wouldn't allow a whipper snapper to get away with disrespect. 'It's a son's duty. Your responsibility lad. Get to work! Earn some money and support your mother.' He was red in the face. 'Get out or I'll have you thrown out. If I catch a Chancellor on my land after this I'll get the police to you.'

  Ma was shaking and weeping and leaning on Frank but all the same he managed to hurl back at the old man, 'Don't you tell me where I can't go! Chancellors have been here longer than you.'

  Then they were at the front entrance. Frank opened the inner glass door and gently led Ma outside and down the drive.

  It was not until minutes later, as they went through the gates that Ma recovered. 'You go to Oxford, son. I'll take the cottage. I'll manage.'

  'I am putting it behind me,' Frank said. 'I'll get a job. We'll not be beholden to anyone.' And when he looked into her dear old face, expecting tears and protests, he saw only relief. That clinched it. 'We'll-never bend the knee or doff our caps again, Ma. Oxford's not for me. I'll earn our living and set the name of Chancellor above the Hammonds one day. I won't be brow-beaten, turned out of my home again. Plenty of successful men never went to university.'

  There would be opportunities. As long as he could take care of Ma and keep a roof over her head, he was free to do what he wanted. And as he realised this he gave a laugh. It had been good, telling that miserable old devil what he thought. Instead of spending half his evenings studying he'd spend his time with Elsie who was becoming increasingly attractive to him as she grew ever prettier and lavished her passionate nature on him. Though she went to chapel and had a high moral conscience, Elsie had none of the false modesty or prudery of the times. She was proud of her body and felt no shame in taking her clothes off for him. She had beautiful breasts. They were milky white and heavy and, naked in the straw, she let him lie on top of her as theyfondled one another to the point of release. He told her, in those days of sorely tried innocence, that what they indulged in was not 'the sinful lusts of the flesh' but in his opinion, 'as near to being wed as dammit is to swearing'.

  God. Where was she? Thinking about her like this, on a hot summer afternoon, his brow was breaking out in a sweat. He climbed back into the car, put it into gear, switched on and let the Alvis roll down the hill a little way, until the revolutions were fast enough for him to engage the· clutch and let the engine burst into life. If he turned right at the foot of the hill, right again, then first right, in fifteen minutes he would be back here. If Elsie was not here by then, he'd give up.

  And as he went he remembered more about the time when he rolled up his school certificates and went to Macclesfield empty-handed.

  To obtain clerical work a lad's family usually paid a premium, for articles or indentures. He did not see how he could get round this but the years of copying the manners of King's School boys had paid off. He borrowed three guineas from Ma for a suit, overcoat and bowler hat. He knew how to put his shoulders back and look a man straight in the eye and he struck lucky on his first day, finding work as a wages
clerk at Pilkington Printers.

  Mr.Grimshaw, the chief clerk interviewed him. 'Twelve and sixpence a week until you reach twenty-one,' he said. 'A tidy wage for a young man.' It was not a tidy wage at all. Pilkington Printers were known for paying the worst wages in town. But it was a job.

  'Thank you, sir,' he said. ‘I’ll not disappoint you. What are myprospects?'

  The stolid clerk said, 'Mr Pilkington is a fair boss.If you work hard you are assured of a good salaried position for life.'

  'Very well,' said Frank. 'I'm sure I'll be an asset to Pilkington's.'

  He found cheap lodgings in a respectable working men's house in Macclesfield, gave Ma half is wages when he went home at weekends, tried to enjoy office work and waited for his opportunity but he was young, keen and impatient for success.

  He hated his lowly position and the people such as the chief clerk who liked a quiet office and warned, 'Know your place. Be thankful you have a job at all in these hard times. Stop larking!' when Frank teased the women of the counting house and the girls in the design room the pretty, artistic young women who painted flowers and repeat patterns far the silk-screen printers. The girls were good for designing cotton prints and good for a laugh and life was not all gloom. At a time of deep unemployment, Frank was lucky to have work. Though he knew this, he could not settle for conformity and a subservient role in life. But for three long years he stayed put, learning the business of printing on cloth, which interested him, and learning to penny-pinch on workers' wages which disgusted him. He also knew that he could do any job in the mill, except designing, better than anyone else. He could run the place more efficiently and still pay good wages and it came hard, taking orders from pompous old men. So though he longed for escape he had no choice. There was no way out.

  Then and it came out of the blue, on a glorious June day in 1914 - an assassin shot dead the heir to the Austrian Empire, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, and his wife who were on a state visit to Serbia. The Vienna government made a series of demands that Serbia could not accept without humiliation, and the world sat up and took notice.

  In the office at Pilkington's, the chief clerk said, 'The territorials have been called up. But if war comes it will be sport for some!'

  In the public houses of Macclesfield the older men said that war would be a gentlemen's show, like the South African campaign had been, when officers and gentlemen of the regiments reduced their rank in order to be allowed to go out to join the fight. From the end of July young officers were strutting about the town. The narrow pavements of Mill Street and Chestergate were only wide enough for two officers abreast, swinging their swagger sticks. At the sight of smart uniforms, pedestrians stepped into the gutters to let them pass. Soldiers were in training at the barracks and Drill Hall, and they marched through the town, an officer at their head. Horses and carts and motors pulled aside to wait their passing.

  Abroad, the Kaiser took offence at the British attempt to mediate. The Austrians were encouraged by the Kaiser and war between Austria and Russia was declared at the end of July. Soon treaties and pacts with foreign countries had to be honoured, boundaries and borders had to be defended.

  Frank envied the young officers. He compared their lives with his. All he had was the dull routine of clerical work and his Saturday nights with Elsie, who would not give in to his requests for total lovemaking. He was more easily aroused now he was older. He believed he was suffering physically, believed in common with most men that sexual arousal followed by denial was weakening him.

  Elsie said, 'I am saving myself for marriage, Frank. It's all I ever wanted. A home in the country. Marriage and children.' He was twenty-one. Too young, too poor for marriage, and afraid of being tied down before he had made his fortune. It was demoralising, seeing the young officers, men with rank, position and a purpose. He had to listen to the design-shop chatter, the girls' cries of 'Oh! Look at him!' when they saw the young blades' riding boots and flashing buttons.

  On 4th August, because the Kaiser would not respect the neutrality of Belgium, Britain declared war on Germany. Cheering crowds gathered in all the cities. In Macc. young men, filled with national pride, waved their hats in the air on their way to the recruiting office. Frank went in his dinner hour and asked the recruiting sergeant, 'Will you take me?'

  'Are you fit? Can you ride?' they asked him.

  'Of course I can ride. I am a farmer's son.'

  'Have you a horse of your own?' He put on his confident, educated and easy air. He said, 'Not at present. I'm in reduced circumstances. When my dear old dad died we gave up the farm.'

  They questioned him further then said that because he had School Certificate and Higher School Certificate, he was 'officer material'. He went back to Pilkington Printers, collected a week's wages, shook hands with the chief clerk, slung his overcoat over his arm and walked out, convinced that this was his opportunity to change his life.

  Ma wept. 'It's not even our country's argument, son. It's Austria and Serbia's fight. Change your mind. Marry little Elsie. Settle down and raise a family like your brothers.'

  'How can I afford marriage? I'd need a house and money.'

  Ma wiped her eyes on her overall. 'Elsie's a pretty girl, Frank. She’s a good girl. She'll make someone a nice little wife. She's been to sewing lessons. Her mother's taught her to keep house. She'll inherit a farm. You'd be a landed Chancellor. A man of property.'

  'Hang on, Ma!'

  She would not be stopped. 'If you go away someone else will get her.' He was amused at her attempt to persuade him of Elsie's charms. She said, 'John Hammond's smitten with Elsie, her mother says. You don't want to lose your girl to John Hammond, do you?'

  He was out of touch with country living and though he knew Elsie was a bit secretive, what they called 'a close 'un', he didn't think she would keep anything like that from him. Elsie knew very well that he had no time for the Hammonds. So he laughed. 'John Hammond? After Elsie? Get away!'

  He laughed again and hugged her. 'I am not going to marry; I want to go to war. I want to teach the Kaiser a lesson.' He lifted her off her feet and swung her round the tiny cottage room. 'It's the gentlemen's regiment, Ma. They don't take riff-raff into the cavalry. The Cheshire Yeomanry's the finest in England. I am going to Eaton Hall, the home of the Duke of Westminster. Your son's going to be an officer and a gentleman!'

  Less than six months later, at the end of January 1915, to a back-ground of war fever, for Britain had suffered heavy losses at Mons and in the line of trenches that stretched from the North Sea to the Swiss border, Frank Chancellor passed out as a lieutenant with the Cheshire Yeomanry. He had three days of freedom before he would report back to Eaton, where he would be given a troop to command and drill for a month. Then he would be posted to the Western Front or - and rumour and counter-rumour was ever changing - he and his men would be sent to the Balkans, where Anglo-French forces were pitted against the Turks who guarded the fortified entrance to the Dardanelles. He hoped to God he’d put up a good fight when battle commenced but he was in a high state of nervous tension when he came home for his first leave, determined not to dwell on what lay ahead.

  He clipped into the office of Pilkington Printers in his uniform, the cavalry twill breeches, worsted jacket with lighter braiding and pips on his cuffs proclaiming his rank, his riding boots polished until they shone like old mahogany, back ramrod straight, slimmer and fitter then before. On his once boyish face he wore the supercilious expression that he had been practising.

  The designer-girls who had demanded that he come in and show himself in uniform, were struck down with shyness. The other clerks were envious and respectful - something they had never been before. Mr.Grimshaw, impressed, lumbered off upstairs to tell Mr Pilkington about the credit being done to Pilkington Printers by their young clerk. Then he came down and said in his pompous way, 'You are required in the office, in five minutes' time. They want to see you in your splendour. Mr Pilkington and his daughter, Sarah.'

  Upst
airs in the office, Sarah, dressed in drab grey, stared out of the window at the dull sky. Everything was grey and cold. The slate grey of the sky was reflected in the waters of the Bollin where dirty grey snow clung to the clumps of dead grass on the river's bank. Downstream of the other mills and their own waste pipe, which gushed dye all day long, the Bollin was a dirty river and not even deep enough to jump into and drown oneself. Then, drowning would be a slow death and a great sin. The gates of heaven were closed to sinners. Dizzy waves of sickness washed over her as she put her hand on to the sill to steady herself.

  She had walked here from Park Lane to talk to Father and tell him everything - here at the mill where he would have to listen to her. What would he do? Would he send her away in disgrace? Would he have her committed to an institution for those of unsound mind? If only there were some way to avoid telling him. If only she could spare him. If only all she needed to say was that she had let her last chance of marriage slip through her fingers.

  She stretched out those long and graceful fingers. Her mother's hands. She kept them white and soft, rubbing them daily with cut lemons before working lanolin cream into them. She had the pale thin skin of girls of her colouring. Her deep coppery hair, thick and wavy, would have been any other girl's crowning glory. Any girl other than she would have worn it swept up and back in wide wings to frame her features, make her face appear round and appealing. Sarah wore it scraped back, plaited and coiled.

  She was plain. She was old - thirty-five years old and a terrible fear was gnawing her. She had fallen in love with John Hammond when he was a dashing twenty-three-year-old catch and she a thirty-three-year-old spinster who had only experienced the spiritual, sanctifying love of God. Her father accused her being the self-appointed linchpin of St Michael's, the parish church. She taught at Sunday school, embroidered altar cloths and went three times a week to Holy Communion.